Optimize it!

[orbsycli]

What are some things I can do to optimize my little windows xp laptop?
I use this laptop as my audio production machine and it's starting to get really laggy.
I know some of you guys hate windows...but I'm a pirate.
Any advice, tips, tricks, programs, etc?

The only thing I really do is end all unnecessary processes and defrag my drive every so often.

thank you

[Boerseun]

You can run a good registry fixer like Registry Mechanic. Do a search for it and download, it's about 5Mb in size.

But be careful - there are a lot of "Optimization" programs out there that are actually malware! But I've never had a day's worth of trouble from Reg Mechanic - it actually speeded up my lil' lappie with about 30-40%.

Also, if your drive is formatted to NTFS, be careful to *NEVER* have less that 12.5% open space! This is critical - by default, NTFS will reserve 12.5% of your drive for the Master File Table, which is basically just an inventory of all your files, their physical location on the drive and rights assigned to them. Windows will never tell you that the 12.5% is not available, it simply reserves it as the last bit of space to be used. But once you've reached that limit, Windows starts to write data to the blank space reserved for your File Table. With the result that as you add, copy and delete files, your File Table itself will become fragmented. And that's the one piece of data that cannot be defragmented later. The only thing that will restore your file table to one contiguous piece of data is a complete low-level format of the drive. This is one pesky thing that Microsoft doesn't tell you about, but if you fill your drive to capacity even once, you're gonna have read issues forever, even if you delete everything. Basically until your next rebuild.

And this applies to all your drives - every NTFS drive has a $MFT file.

So, whatever drive you have, external, internal, DON'T fill it to more than 87.5% capacity, EVER! - unless, of course, you don't mind a rebuild every now and then...

Also, when you're not on the web, disable your antivirus. They take up a hell of a lot of resources for no good reason, if you know you're safe. I disable mine when I'm designing off-line. I use 3D Studio MAX, Photoshop and InDesign simultaneously, and my antivirus slows it down by more than half. When I'm not connected, I simply turn it off.

Another thing - if you've multiple physical drives, switch your virtual memory (swap file) to a different disk than which your OS resides on. This'll also save you some speed. But make sure its an internal drive, an external USB will slow it down more. ( You did say laptop! - Pointing the swap file to a different partition on the same physical drive won't help at all - it still uses the same read heads on the same platters!)

Oh well - there are many tweaks and twists. Above are simply a few starters. Lemme knows hows it goes.

[orbsycli]

cool,
thanks for that information!

[orbsycli]

Registry mechanic worked like a charm.
it found over 800 problems. nice!

anything else I should do to polish up my system?

It appears to be super spiffy now (just for the record)

[Boerseun]

Originally Posted by orbsycli

Registry mechanic worked like a charm.
it found over 800 problems. nice!

anything else I should do to polish up my system?

It appears to be super spiffy now (just for the record)

Glad to hear that!

Most of the gradual system slow-down over time on Windows machines is simply due to a crappily-built and managed registry, the one weak spot holding all your applications ransom to its sloppy design. A good fix every now and then will solve a lot of issues.

(...have you ever had your drive filled to capacity, or above 87.5%? In that case, if it's still real slow in accessing data, a rebuild might be in your future... )

[orbsycli]

luckily I have never gone overboard with this hard drive, thats a great tip.

[freeztar]

Actually Boerseun, you can defrag the MFT.

There is a new generation of defraggers that can work with the MFT and paging files. According to Microsoft, it is vitally important performance-wise to defragment the MFT and paging files. However, it is only safe to do so using boot-time defragmentation.

MFT - Master File Table

Diskkeeper is a good program for doing this, but it's not necessary (the program, not the defrag).

It's interesting you gave the 12.5% number because I've always heard 10-15%. The page I linked to above makes mention of the 12.5%.

So is that per disk, or per partition?

[Boerseun]

That's the default size, you can set it lower or even higher at formatting time. Or so I've heard - I've never played around with the MFT size. Also, apparently it's per partition, seeing as every partition needs a File Table.

But by default, it's 12.5% of the volume size.

Interesting tip, I've never heard about NTFS file tables being defragmentable! Awesome!

[alexander]

Wow windows is sooo dumb then... One would hope that upon moving the data around on the drive, the windows defragmenter would correct the structure of the MFT.... apparently not tho...

You know, MS has been in business since the early 80's, one of many things that are just enfuckerating(read the linguistics section for the meaning) is that Windows still runs an FS that can't manage it's own fragmentation, AND it (meaning windows) still includes no support for using more stable and better performing filesystems that can manage their own fragmentation...

Like seriously, with Vista MS has finally almost caught up with the networking world in their new stack (and don't even get me started on that one), and they still use an early 90's FS. They couldn't even do what they do all the time, and just copy the already written FS code from another OS and compile it into Windows to claim as "their newest innovation in software", they do it all the time with their other stuff, why couldn't they do it with their FS?

going with their dumb acronym scheme they could call it (the new NMHPNTNFNTAFS)
(also known as New Millenium, High Performance, New Technology, Non Fragmenting, Newly Technologically Advanced File System)